Like Vidigueira’s Coop, Cooperativa Adega de Borba is both an historically important center for talha winemaking and a major producer of wine for all of Portugal. Indeed, Portuguese consumers have long recognized Adega de Borba for their consistently good quality, reasonably priced wines (10 million bottles!), especially their reds.

The talha built into the Adega’s early-14th century fortified walls indicate they’ve been around for at least seven centuries, but there can be little doubt talha kept the Roman stonemasons who carved high quality marble out of nearby quarries, happy as well. Borba itself is a key city in the ‘northern’ talha culture that stretches west into Arcos and Estremoz and further north into the mountains around Portalegre. These northerners inhabited higher elevations and experienced cooler climates, which favored different mixes of grapes from their southern neighbors. All these regions sourced their talha from master potters based near Borba, in Campo Maior and Amieira do Tejo.

Cooperativa Adega de Borba’s winemaker Oscar Gato reckons the beginning of the decline of talha began in the late 19th century with the introduction of concrete tanks. Talha co-existed with concrete until the advent of the coop in 1955. Thereafter talha went into serious decline, with grapes instead destined to be made into wine at the cooperative.

Gato explained that the cooperative was originally established in 1955 by 45 producers who were tired of being exploited by negociants buying up their wine, blending it into their brands and collecting all the profit. Banding together to gain scale, they cut out the middlemen, and invested in new technology, bottling collectively and dividing the profits between themselves.

In 2014, Gato re-established talha wine production at the cooperative. Ironically, this was around the time I visited the last of nearby Arcos’s wonderfully authentic, tiny neighborhood tascas. Operated by Antonio Gato (see opening tasca chapter) it turns out he is Oscar’s uncle. Smaller scale talha production had continued in tabernas but this diminished over the years, with Gato’s uncle’s small scale tasca being one of the last holdouts.

Antonio has since retired and, sadly, his tasca has now closed its doors. But across the street in Senhor Gato’s adega, an old 1670 talha is hidden away. We can only hope that Gato’s tasca will find someone eager to bring it back to life and this beautiful talha will find its way back into use.  

Borba’s grapes are grown on a high plateau between 400-500m. Like all of the northern talha enclaves, this higher elevation creates a wetter, cooler climate, often with a 20C degree difference between day and night temperature. Gato selects grapes for balance and natural acidity. All that and a longer growing season favors freshly fruited, elegantly styled reds, which, in Borba’s case, makes up 70% of production.

Since 2014 production has ranged between 3000-5000 bottles of red per year. 2021 marks the first production of around a 1000 bottles of white talha wine. All of the coop’s talha wine is certified Vinho de Talha DOC. The only non-traditional practice is the introduction of stainless steel cooling rods into talha to lower temperatures which makes for fresher, fruitier styles. They also don’t use pés, which adds to the emphasis on pure fruit characters.

Although Borba own 14 large (1000-1800L) old talha dating from between 1860-1890, they only use five currently. As the market for talha wine grows, the cooperative has a huge potential, given its massive source of old vineyards and pots, to restore what was once the prevailing wine style of Borba and its surrounding region.

Cooperativa Adega de Borba Wines

Talhas de Borba Branco 2021 

Talhas de Borba Tinto 2020 

Talhas de Borba Tinto 2019 

Talhas de Borba Tinto 2018